When I was in Israel in January, I attended a lecture by Tal Becker, a diplomat and senior member of Israel’s peace negotiations team. Dr. Becker has participated in three failed rounds of peace talks between Israel and Palestine, including the last round of talks mediated by John Kerry. Becker began his lecture by expressing regret that he studied International Relations in university. “What I should have done was get a doctorate in psychology,” Becker said, remarking that what he was doing in negotiation rooms was facilitating a dialogue between “two traumatized peoples.”

Becker’s view of Israelis and Palestinians as “two traumatized peoples” evades the common victim/victimizer binary of the conflict by equalizing the people on both sides. His acknowledgement of the psychological ramifications of living in terror zones can help explain the value of projects like Pierre Dulaine’s that bring the arts to divided communities. The documentary Dancing in Jaffa shows how the arts can facilitate communication and respect between two populations that are taught to vilify one another. It’s true that teaching Israeli and Palestinian (or arab-Israeli) children to dance with each other won’t bring an end to the conflict. But Dulaine’s project is laudable in its potential to instill respect and understanding among the generation that will one day inherit the responsibility of creating peace.

I think that the value of Dulaine’s project lies in its ability to make children show each other their insecurities.  The students from Israeli and Palsetinian schools learned at home to vilify one another. Their dance classes with Dulaine, though, revealed that all of students shared similar vulnerabilities in an unfamiliar situation: many were timid about approaching partners, leery of touching students of the opposite sex, and eager to get their moves right for Pierre. By giving students a shared goal that would force them to put their trust in one another, Dulaine’s project required them to revise what they’d learned at home so that they could see each other in a new way – as partners, and not as enemies.